


old games

by fluffysfics



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, but feral Doctor is fun, past relationship, the Doctor goes feral, the Master gets punched, they finally talk and they solve Absolutely Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25114006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffysfics/pseuds/fluffysfics
Summary: The Doctor has been stuck in prison for two weeks. She’s formulating an escape plan, obviously.Of course, the Master just HAS to come sauntering in, back from the dead, to ruin her day.(alt title: Two Feral Idiots Stopped From Brawling Only By Large Metal Door)
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 82





	old games

After two weeks in prison, the Doctor was getting used to life here. Or at least she was developing a routine. 

Early in what she’d decided was the morning, a guard would shove a nutrient bar through the door. The same thing would happen in the evening, and then about half an hour later, the lights would shut off for the night. There were patrols up and down the corridor once every eighty-six minutes. Presuming that was a standard measurement of time like a human hour, that narrowed down the places she could be quite considerably. But not enough to say for sure. She couldn’t know _anything_ for sure. 

She’d been theorising, though. To her companions, or at least the convenient representations of them in her head. If she closed her eyes, she could picture them. Graham perched on the cold metal stool in the corner, Ryan leaning against the wall, Yaz standing upright with her arms folded. The three of them made for perfect sounding boards, since the versions of them in her head weren’t nearly as argumentative as their real selves. 

Talking to oneself was the first sign of madness, as the old human saying went. But if the Doctor was mad, she thought she’d probably gone mad a long time ago. Maybe when she’d stolen a TARDIS. Maybe when she’d snogged Koschei in a sacred catacomb when they were only in their eighties. Or maybe she’d gone mad _long_ before that, in a distant lifetime that she wasn’t allowed to remember. 

“Eighty-four,” she said out loud, sighing. The Graham in her imagination gave her a sympathetic smile and told her to _cheer up, Doc_. She did not cheer up. This cell was tiny. No space to run, barely even space to jump around and wave her arms. No one to talk to, nothing to do except talk to the figures in her imagination. 

“Eighty-five. When I get out of here, I’m _so_ never gonna count anything ever again. It’s so _boring_.” Imaginary Yaz and Ryan glanced at each other and rolled their eyes. Ooh, apparently her imagination was developing sass. That was a whole new branch of self-hatred that she was going to avoid analysing for as long as possible. 

Eighty-six. That, the Doctor didn’t say out loud, because she was busy listening. The guards were due to start their rounds. There would be eight beeps on a keypad, then a click, a hiss of a door sliding open, and then boots walking down the corridor. Down, back up, then eight more beeps and another click and hiss. She was hoping that if she heard the beeps enough times, she’d be able to tell the model of the keypad, and match the tones of the beeps to the numbers on it. It was not a great plan, but it was something to keep her occupied until she could figure out a better way to escape. 

There were no beeps. 

Instead, there was a sound like electrical wires sparking and dying, being crunched up smaller than they had any natural right to be. 

Click. 

Hiss. 

Boots. Lighter footsteps than usual. 

The Doctor frowned, darting to her cell door and standing on her tiptoes to peer out of the tiny slit window. None of her other selves would have had a problem reaching the gap, she thought bitterly, and then that thought was very abruptly cut off by a whole _train_ of other thoughts. None of them good. 

“You!”

“ _Me_. Surprise!” The Master’s wide brown eyes loomed in front of the slit window, and then were swiftly replaced with the business end of his TCE. The Doctor reared back. 

The slit window glowed bright orange with heat and then snapped into a miniature version of itself that pinged onto the floor of her cell. There was now a head-sized gap in the door. She _still_ had to get on her tiptoes to reach it. 

“Thought you were dead,” she said, even though she’d thought no such thing. The Master could be shot, drowned, burned, flung into space, eaten, destroyed, or erased from time, and he’d still find a way to come back and haunt her. 

“Sorry to disappoint,” he said lightly. Too lightly. “ _Doctor_. The great Oncoming Storm. Progenitor of the Time Lords. Look at you now. Stuck in a concrete room. Heh.” 

The Doctor glared at him. Was this a rescue, or was he here to gloat? Despite everything, she thought she might kiss him if he actually opened this cell door and let her out. Kiss him, and then run very far away and go find her TARDIS without him, because she was _not_ ready to have that conversation any time soon. 

“You look healthy,” she remarked, as coldly as she could. “Your little friend abandon you?” 

Anger flitted across the Master’s face, hot and intense, but he forced a smile over it. “My _little friend_ is in a nice safe box on the TARDIS I escaped your _murder attempt_ in. Going to have to try harder than that if you want me dead, Doctor. C’mon, put some welly into it.” He stood back, against the opposite wall, and spread his arms wide. 

Oh, if only she could open this door. She’d have him eating his words in a heartsbeat. 

“Ah, wait.” He put a hand to his mouth, eyes wide like he’d committed some little social faux pas. It would be comical if it wasn’t so completely _annoying_. “You can’t. Silly me. Forgot.” 

The Doctor gritted her teeth, stepping right up to the hole in the door and pressing her face against it. “What are you doing here? I know you. You’re not here for a chat.” 

“What, can’t a Time Lord come say hi to his oldest friend as she languishes in prison?” The Master stepped closer as well, his face inches away from hers. “Ask me nicely, dear, and maybe I’ll tell you.” 

The Doctor _seethed_. She glared at him, bared her teeth through the bars, smacked her fist against the door hard enough to make it shake. 

“I don’t owe you _nice_ , Koschei,” she snapped. “You destroyed our planet. You turned our people into monsters!” 

“They were already monsters,” he snarled at her, composure dropping away to reveal that raw, painful anger she’d been so shaken by back in the Matrix chamber. “They deserved it, Doctor, you know they did. The whole filthy planet deserved to burn.” 

“Children! There were _children_ there!” She was snarling right back, hands gripping the edges of the window so hard that her knuckles turned white. 

“You were a child too, didn’t stop the Time Lords from _torturing_ you,” he spat. 

“Oh! Oh, right. Yeah. Time Lords hurt me as a child, so you go murder every living being on the planet. Children included. So you’re no better than Tecteun, that’s what you’re saying?” The name made her gut wrench to say out loud; a reaction of pure, miserable fear that felt more ancient than she could fathom. 

But whatever the name did to her, the accusation she’d laid on him seemed to hit the Master far harder. He reeled back, turning away from her, pressing his hands to his face. He bent almost double, and she could hear him muttering to himself- the sounds echoed in the corridor, none of them clear enough to be coherent. He looked a mess. 

_Good_ , part of her said immediately. She could look at his broken form with a cold, cruel twist of satisfaction. It was the same feeling she’d gotten when she’d outwitted him on the Eiffel Tower, when he’d shoved her up against the railings with a hand around her throat, and all she’d done was bare her teeth at him and _grin_. 

Oh, but she’d been feeling guilty over that ever since she’d stepped out of the lift at the bottom of the tower. 

“Master,” she said softly, reining in the sadistic streak that wanted to spit more insults at him. She needed him functional, if she was going to get out of here. 

Just the sound of his title seemed to work wonders, straightening him back up to his full height. He turned to look at her, and his eyes were red, long lashes damp and clumped together with tears. 

“What, _Doctor_?” The way he said _her_ title carried more of a sting than any careless insult, a wounding contrast to the gentleness with which she’d addressed him. She was reminded of lives long past; of working together in science labs, of hearing _my dear Doctor_ and feeling her hearts warm slightly every time. All that was in her hearts now was a bitter, regretful sadness at how they’d ended up. 

“Tell me why you’re here,” she said, keeping her voice as even as she could. “Please. Master.” She could not, _absolutely_ could not bring herself to do the big wide eyes that some of her previous selves would have been able to pull off. He’d told her to ask nicely. He’d have to accept this flat, too-calm version of begging. 

“Well,” he said, softly. “Not every day that my _dear_ best enemy gets herself locked up in one of the most secure prisons in the universe, is it? Had to come see what was going on. And my, my, haven’t you been a naughty girl?” 

The Doctor very much wanted to grab his hair through the window and pull on it until he smacked his head on the door, just for the _naughty girl_ comment. She almost did it, would have done if not for the fact that her desire for more information currently outweighed her desire to beat him to a pulp. 

“I don’t know,” she said flatly, pointedly holding back about a thousand stinging barbs regarding all of the _naughtiness_ he’d been involved in over his many years of life. “Have I?” 

“Well. Apparently.” The Master shrugged, grinning at her. It was completely insincere, and made his face look twisted, unnatural. “Most of your record’s redacted. But your sentence...ooh, Doctor, you’re not getting out of here for a _long_ time.” 

“You could break me out,” she said, cutting to the chase. “Think you owe me a prison break after destroying our planet.” 

“My planet, not yours,” he snapped. It was unnerving, how fast he seemed to flicker between casually chatty, and _furious_. “And I did that for you, Theta. I don’t owe you.” 

She narrowed her eyes at him, and then smiled, cold and terrifying. “You owe me for the Vault. All that time I looked after you.” 

“Kept me _prisoner_ , more like.” He scowled, shaken. 

“I gave you everything you wanted, ‘cept the pony and the weapons. You had a _piano_. I looked after you.” 

The Master growled at her, and then stepped back. “I broke all the doors on the way in here. The code for your cell door is 2-3-1-1-1-9-6-3. There’s a physical lock, too. The keys are here.” He reached into his pocket, and dug out a keyring, on which hung several sleek silver strips of metal. They didn’t look like keys, but they weren’t exactly in a medieval Earth dungeon. Technology had changed, she supposed. 

Seeing an opportunity, the Doctor made a grab for them. She came up short, bashing her shoulder against the hole in the door, and the Master snatched them well out of her reach. 

“Come _on_ ,” she snapped, pressing her face into the window again. “You want to let me out, or else you wouldn’t have taken the keys. Stop being a prick about it, Koschei.” 

“No,” he said coolly, and then his face twisted, anger flaring again. “ _No_. You had me on my knees, Doctor. You had me begging, and you told me that you were more than me.” He gripped the ring in one hand so tightly that she saw the metal bend, keys jangling. “You want to get out of here? Beg. Beg me, Doctor. Get on your knees in front of that door and beg me to let you out.” 

She considered it. Not for very long. The Master had gotten her on her knees once before, in the Adelaide Gallery, and between the thrill of playing their old games, of having him _close_ , she’d hated it. Never again. 

The Doctor was so tired of their _old games_. The oldest dance in the universe, and she just wanted to sit down and take a break. Or scream and lash out at her dance partner until he was bruised and bloody, and so was she. 

“No one to threaten in here,” she said, her tone icy. “No humans on the line. I’m not kneeling for you to save my own skin. How selfish do you think I am?” 

“Incredibly,” the Master said, almost instantly. He stepped up close to the door, his face suddenly barely an inch from hers. For the briefest of mad moments, she glanced at his lips, was reminded of their younger years. Not for long. “I think you’re the most selfish creature in the universe, Doctor. You let an old man sacrifice himself for you. You stranded me on Earth for almost a century just so you could get back to your little friends. You held me in a vault for seventy years just so you could make me more like you. So you could- could... _twist_ me, play some sick moral game to make you feel better about yourself. I see right through you, Doctor. Always have done.” 

She yelled with frustration, drew back a hand. The Master assumed she was going for the keys. He was wrong. 

The Doctor’s fist caught him on the jaw, and before he had time to do much more than flail with surprise, she’d grabbed hold of his hair and pulled him close to the door, not really caring if his forehead happened to smack into it before she got him in position. He stared up at her, eyes wide with an emotion she didn’t want to put a name to. 

“I see right through _you_ ,” she snarled. “You’re obsessed, and sad, and _sick_. You get off on hurting people, just so long as it gets my attention. Well, you’ve got it, Koschei, and you disgust me.” 

She let him go, and the Master stumbled back, hand probing his bruised jawline. He looked up at her, and regret flashed across his face for a fraction of a second. 

“You loved me once,” he said, and then he was gone, stalking off down the corridor like he’d never been there. 

She still did love him, if she ever stopped running long enough to let herself feel it. 

The Doctor closed her eyes, and turned back to the dark interior of her cell. Slowly, she opened her clenched fist, and let the bundle of keys she’d stolen from him in the chaos hang from the tips of her fingers. 

Two weeks in prison. Far too long without running. Her emotions were starting to catch up to her. 

“I’ll see you again,” she murmured, thumb brushing over the bend in the metal keyring where the Master had crushed it in his anger. 

Then she turned towards the door, and _freedom_ , and- hopefully- a whole lot more running. 

**Author's Note:**

> fic inspired by the thoschei discord server saying they just wanted the Doctor to get angry in fanfic more, because honestly, mood
> 
> hope y’all enjoyed, comments and kudos much appreciated <3


End file.
